A place for everything

Yesterday I spent four hours with my friend Allison helping her get her office (and a portion of her life) more organized. I’ve been using a lot of the principles from the book Getting Things Done by David Allen for about eight years now, and it’s really turned my life around in a lot of ways. When I was younger, I depended on my memory and pure mental horsepower to make sure that my projects got completed, my bills got paid, and so forth. But as my life got more complicated, this approach started to break down. One summer when I was working on two full-time consulting jobs and trying to finish writing my first book with two young children in the house, I realized that something had to give.

So now I’ve got a pretty good grasp on my work, and I’m not often “surprised” by things that used to slip through the cracks. And I got a real feeling of accomplishment helping Allison start doing the same thing for herself. Time is the one commodity they’re not making more of for any of us, so anything I can do to help people use it better seems like a worthwhile way to spend mine.